What is B2B Customer Accounts?

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B2B customer accounts are company-level accounts that represent an entire buying organization rather than a single shopper — grouping multiple users, roles, and permissions under one business entity. Instead of one person with one login, a B2B account models a company: its buyers, approvers, and administrators, each with defined rights and a shared set of contract terms.

This structure is what makes real B2B selling possible. A single business account can hold many users organized into a hierarchy — a purchasing agent who builds orders, a manager who approves them, and an admin who manages the team — all tied to the company’s negotiated pricing, catalog, payment terms, and order history. Larger organizations extend this into multi-tier account hierarchies with divisions, subsidiaries, or regional units under one parent account.

The reason accounts work this way is that B2B purchasing is rarely a solo act. Orders pass through approval chains, spending limits apply per user, and different people handle ordering, authorization, and payment. B2B customer accounts encode those real-world roles into the platform, so the buying process online mirrors how the company actually operates — with control and auditability built in.

B2B customer accounts are the foundation the rest of the B2B feature set sits on: shared catalogs define what each account sees, contract pricing defines what they pay, and B2B buyer portals give them a place to self-serve. In Adobe Commerce, company accounts and hierarchies ship as a native B2B capability, though deep multi-tier org charts or integration with external identity systems are a common point where businesses need custom development.